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In our attempt to elucidate the Essence of the soul, we show
it to be neither a material fabric nor, among immaterial things,
a harmony. The theory that it is some final development, some
entelechy, we pass by, holding this to be neither true as
presented nor practically definitive.
No doubt we make a very positive statement about it when we
declare it to belong to the Intellectual Kind, to be of the
divine order; but a deeper penetration of its nature is demanded.
In that allocation we were distinguishing things as they fall
under the Intellectual or the sensible, and we placed the soul in
the former class; now, taking its membership of the Intellectual
for granted, we must investigate by another path the more
specific characteristics of its nature.
There are, we hold, things primarily apt to partition, tending by
sheer nature towards separate existence: they are things in which
no part is identical either with another part or with the whole,
while, also their part is necessarily less than the total and
whole: these are magnitudes of the realm of sense, masses, each
of which has a station of its own so that none can be identically
present in entirety at more than one point at one time.
But to that order is opposed Essence [Real-Being]; this is in no
degree susceptible of partition; it is unparted and impartible;
interval is foreign to it, cannot enter into our idea of it: it
has no need of place and is not, in diffusion or as an entirety,
situated within any other being: it is poised over all beings at
once, and this is not in the sense of using them as a base but in
their being neither capable nor desirous of existing
independently of it; it is an essence eternally unvaried: it is
common to all that follows upon it: it is like the circle's
centre to which all the radii are attached while leaving it
unbrokenly in possession of itself, the starting point of their
course and of their essential being, the ground in which they all
participate: thus the indivisible is the principle of these
divided existences and in their very outgoing they remain
enduringly in contact with that stationary essence.
So far we have the primarily indivisible- supreme among the
Intellectual and Authentically Existent- and we have its
contrary, the Kind definitely divisible in things of sense; but
there is also another Kind, of earlier rank than the sensible yet
near to it and resident within it- an order, not, like body,
primarily a thing of part, but becoming so upon incorporation.
The bodies are separate, and the ideal form which enters them is
correspondingly sundered while, still, it is present as one whole
in each of its severed parts, since amid that multiplicity in
which complete individuality has entailed complete partition,
there is a permanent identity; we may think of colour, qualities
of all kinds, some particular shape, which can be present in many
unrelated objects at the one moment, each entire and yet with no
community of experience among the various manifestations. In the
case of such ideal-forms we may affirm complete partibility.
But, on the other hand, that first utterly indivisible Kind must
be accompanied by a subsequent Essence, engendered by it and
holding indivisibility from it but, in virtue of the necessary
outgo from source, tending firmly towards the contrary, the
wholly partible; this secondary Essence will take an intermediate
Place between the first substance, the undivided, and that which
is divisible in material things and resides in them. Its
presence, however, will differ in one respect from that of colour
and quantity; these, no doubt, are present identically and entire
throughout diverse material masses, but each several
manifestation of them is as distinct from every other as the mass
is from the mass.
The magnitude present in any mass is definitely one thing, yet
its identity from part to part does not imply any such community
as would entail common experience; within that identity there is
diversity, for it is a condition only, not the actual Essence.
The Essence, very near to the impartible, which we assert to
belong to the Kind we are now dealing with, is at once an Essence
and an entrant into body; upon embodiment, it experiences a
partition unknown before it thus bestowed itself.
In whatsoever bodies it occupies- even the vastest of all, that
in which the entire universe is included- it gives itself to the
whole without abdicating its unity.
This unity of an Essence is not like that of body, which is a
unit by the mode of continuous extension, the mode of distinct
parts each occupying its own space. Nor is it such a unity as we
have dealt with in the case of quality.
The nature, at once divisible and indivisible, which we affirm to
be soul has not the unity of an extended thing: it does not
consist of separate sections; its divisibility lies in its
presence at every point of the recipient, but it is indivisible
as dwelling entire in the total and entire in any part.
To have penetrated this idea is to know the greatness of the soul
and its power, the divinity and wonder of its being, as a nature
transcending the sphere of Things.
Itself devoid of mass, it is present to all mass: it exists here
and yet is There, and this not in distinct phases but with
unsundered identity: thus it is "parted and not parted," or,
better, it has never known partition, never become a parted
thing, but remains a self-gathered integral, and is "parted among
bodies" merely in the sense that bodies, in virtue of their own
sundered existence, cannot receive it unless in some partitive
mode; the partition, in other words, is an occurrence in body not
in soul.
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